Supreme Court in India has instructed authorities in Delhi and its surrounding cities to remove all stray dogs from public areas and relocate them to dedicated animal shelters within eight weeks.
The directive follows growing concerns over an increase in dog bite incidents, which the court said had led to more cases of rabies.
Municipal data suggests Delhi alone has around one million stray dogs, with numbers also rising in Noida, Ghaziabad, and Gurugram.
The court emphasised that infants and young children must be protected from the threat of rabies and called for measures that would allow residents to move about without fear of dog attacks.
It ordered the creation of multiple shelters in the region, each capable of housing at least 5,000 dogs, and equipped with sterilisation, vaccination, and surveillance facilities.
It also mandated a helpline for reporting dog bites and rabies cases within one week.
Current rules require sterilised dogs to be returned to the place they were captured, but the court stated that no sterilised dogs should be released back into public spaces.
Animal rights groups have criticised the order, warning that the proposed timeline is impractical given the lack of adequate shelter facilities.
Nilesh Bhanage, founder of PAWS, argued that most Indian cities do not have even 1% of the infrastructure needed to house their stray populations.
He urged authorities to strengthen enforcement of existing measures such as mass vaccination, sterilisation programmes, and better waste management.
According to government figures, 3.7 million dog bite cases were reported nationwide in 2024.
Official data listed 54 rabies deaths last year, up slightly from 50 in 2023, though the World Health Organization estimates that 18,000–20,000 people die annually from the disease in India, suggesting significant underreporting.